In the primitive time the Christian confessors showed how fondly they had been taught to regard their offspring, to care for their souls in life and in death, to commend them with deathless love to Him who had opened the gates of everlasting life. In the Roman catacombs, far beneath the city, the places of early Christian worship and burial, the inscriptions on the tombstones well express the parental feelings of that time. An uncommonly large portion of the epitaphs given in the description belong to children, and they express the tenderest affection. "Virginius remained but a short time with us." "Sweet Faustina, may you live in God." "Laurence to his sweetest son, Severus, borne away by angels on the seventh Ides of January." How different the spirit breathed in such inscriptions from that inspired by the idolatry, that formed a god of the war-spirit that makes childhood desolate and orphaned, or bows down before Moloch and casts children into the fire at his feet! Turn even to those ages that are called by eminence dark--the time of monkish austerity and priestly sway. There is much in their annals to move indignation and sometimes horror. But interpret them fairly, and we find much to move our admiration and love. Consider that embodiment of the middle ages, the Gothic cathedral, wonderful alike for the vastness of its proportions and the delicacy of its details. There may be austerity in the priests that attend its altars, fanaticism in the monks who chant its litanies, cruelty in the mailed men who kneel at its chancel. But how tender is the expression of the whole in reference to childhood! The Holy Mother and her Divine child beam upon the worshipper from illuminated missals and painted windows. Conspicuous at the vestibule or by the altar, stands the baptismal font. Thither the child of the poorest peasant is brought, and by the baptismal water the child is recognized as belonging to the kingdom not of this world, a lamb of the good Shepherd. Not for the few rich, noble or mighty, but even for him, the least of the earth, this temple was erected, and by that rite the church, imperial in its stately palace, promises to watch over the child, care for his soul in sorrow, sickness and death. What would childhood have been in the dark ages without the Church? What other power could have stood between innocence and its tempter and destroyer? Who would have withstood Herod, if the mother heart of Christianity had withheld its guardianship?